The European Space Agency is giving the LISA Pathfinder probe what it calls the “Bake, rattle and roll” treatment in the hope it teaches us how to make its successors even better.
As the name suggests, LISA Pathfinder is a test mission for the planned three-vessel LISA space observatory, which will be positioned in a …

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LISA Pathfinder has servered ESA well

It will have allowed them to test design models against actual conditions as well as how well the hardware really handles them, allowing them to tighten up what they expect in terms of LISA's actual performance.

These tests will give them data on what extreme conditions look like in the data. Useful to know if the real system starts misbehaving.

Re: Out of sight ...?

"... in an orbit that should keep it clear of the Earth or Moon for a century or more."

Yep. What that tells me is that by the time it might become an danger to us, they will have forgotten about it and it will come as a big surprise to everyone when it suddenly crashes into our recently built Lunar colony.